


Fade Together

by noblydonedonnanoble



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Donna attempt to re-build their relationship after he returns her memories to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in the aftermath of an undescribed fix-it scenario. Use your imaginations for how that happened.
> 
> Also, this fic assumes that Ten and Donna had a romantic relationship--which I only briefly hint at in the first chapter, but that'll become clear later.

                The TARDIS is humming more loudly than usual. Donna rolls over and groans, burying her head under her pillow as she exclaims, “Doctor, what’s got her in such a state?” It’s bad enough that she’s got a pounding headache; she doesn’t need the TARDIS shouting on top of it.

                The Doctor doesn’t respond. Must still be asleep. Well, he’s useless. Donna burrows deeper into the covers, desperate to tune out the noise.

                And then things start to click.

                In a flash, she bolts up into a sitting position, taking in her surroundings.

                She’s in her room in the TARDIS, and if she didn’t know any better, she would think that she’d never been gone.

                Her eyes fall to a man, sitting at the foot of her bed. He’s only barely still in his chair—it seems that he fell asleep while watching over her, and he’s fallen forward onto the bed, where he’s softly snoring into Donna’s comforter.

                The man isn’t the Doctor, or at least, he’s not _her_ Doctor. Donna is perfectly aware that the Doctor can change his face, and looking at this man, she vaguely recalls him introducing himself to her mum as ‘the Doctor’, right before she blacked out. But it’s hard to believe that it’s him. He’s all… wrong. Salt and pepper hair and stern features, even now, while he’s sleeping. Like he’s ready to jolt awake at any moment and start running. No. This certainly isn’t the Doctor she knows.

                It occurs to Donna that, although it’s disconcerting to look at a different face and try to think of it as ‘the Doctor’, it’s the least of her problems.

                What is she going to say to him when he wakes up? A simple ‘hello’ hardly does the moment justice.

                Particularly because she feels that a slap would probably be more appropriate.

                Maybe she just won’t say anything. A good smack and then out the door. Admittedly, it might sully their reunion just a tad… But it doesn’t seem right to just greet him with the fervor that he no doubt expects.  Donna is _angry_ with him, and the more she contemplates the situation, the angrier she becomes.

                After some time, Donna rises from the bed and begins pacing the room. She can be civil about this, surely.

                It takes even longer for the Doctor to stir. He lets out a low groan and sits up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He looks to the spot where Donna should be sleeping, and seeing her gone, his eyes widen and he looks hurriedly around the room.

                “Donna,” he breathes, relieved, when he sees her in the corner across from him. She holds herself stiffly as he stands and comes closer, but the Doctor doesn’t seem to notice her discomfort. “How… how are you feeling?”

                “Can’t complain,” she says warily. Don’t hit him. Just don’t hit him. Shouting is fine, but just don’t smack the man.

                “I’m so glad to hear that. There was a moment… that is to say, I wasn’t sure… I’m so pleased.” Without further ado, he lunges forward to pull her into a hug.

                And she slaps him.

                Really, he’s to blame for thinking that Donna would actually be up for a hug right about then.

                But the Doctor seems to have no understanding of what’s just happened. He staggers back and brings a hand up to rub his smarting cheek, and stares at her, wide-eyed. “I thought you would be pleased to see me, too.”

                “I am.” She can’t deny that.

                “What’d you smack me for, then?” he grumbles.

                “You’ve got to be joking.” He blinks at her. Not joking, then. “You took my bloody memory away! Plopped me down back at home and I went about my life, none the wiser. For five years! Couldn’t have just nipped back around the next day and fixed it all; no, you certainly took your time, gallivanting around the universe doing who knows what. And you don’t understand why I smacked you. Honestly.”

                She pauses, waiting for something akin to an apology, and finds herself unpleasantly surprised when he asks, “But what else should I have done?”

                “What else…” Donna echoes. She lets out a huff and storms away from the Doctor, intent to put some more space between them before he does something daft like try to hug her again. “You should have listened to me when I said _no_.”

                “You would have died!”

                Donna scowls. “You might as well have killed me yourself. I…” She hesitates. “You made me better, Doctor. You made me happy. And then you took that away. I never wanted to be that person again, but you made the choice for me, didn’t you? So I’m sorry if I’m not running into your arms, but I can’t let you think that what you did was okay.”

                “I did what I thought was best,” he says weakly.

                As always. Donna lets out a low growl and shakes her head. They had that row often enough when she was traveling with him before; she doesn’t need to start it up again right now. Instead, she voices a question that’s been in the back of her mind since she woke up: “What made you come back?”

                The Doctor, after all, is not exactly prone to popping by after sending his companions on their way.

                He seems reluctant to answer the question. “Do you really not remember?”

                No. No she does not. She shakes her head, suddenly feeling concerned that she won’t like whatever he has to tell her.

                The Doctor sinks down and sits on the edge of the bed, suddenly looking very tired. The sight makes Donna want to run to him, comfort him as she’s done so many times—just because he’s got a different face doesn’t mean that he doesn’t need her, after all. But she maintains her distance as he says, gently, “You were starting to remember me. Things from our travels together.”

                “No I wasn’t,” she protests. Surely she would remember remembering.

                “But you were. It was initially just a moment here and there. Blink and you’d miss it. But then it started getting worse. You’d black out afterwards. And eventually, you always had a pounding headache.”

                That part, Donna does remember. She can remember going to countless doctors, trying to find a treatment for headaches that just couldn’t seem to go away. “And how did you know?” she asks “You weren’t…” Checking in, she wants to say. It’d be too much to hope that he was actually checking in.

                “Your grandfather found me. Said he’d been keeping his eyes peeled for my TARDIS for the past two years, and that whatever I did to fix you, it wasn’t working. That’s why I came back.”

                As Donna suspected, then—not checking in. Just in the right place at the right time.

                “And you just swept in and fixed something that the other you said would be impossible to fix.”

                “Yes.”

                “Before Gramps found you, did you already have an idea for how you might be able to fix me?”

                The Doctor hesitates, but under Donna’s intent stare, he breaks. “Yes.”

                Well, this reunion is just becoming better and better. Donna crosses her arms and gazes at him sternly. “Why didn’t you come back, then? Did you not want me to remember you? To remember the places we went and the things we did?”

                “No, nothing like that!” The Doctor jumps up from the bed and marches up to Donna, leaving her cornered and anxious and ready to hit him again if he says the wrong thing. His tone has changed, and he sounds angry now, too. “I thought that what I’d done to you would be a permanent solution. The alternative… There was a chance that it could kill you. I couldn’t come back and do that, not when I thought that leaving you be was safer. That would have been… selfish. Reckless.”

                “Oh yeah, because you’ve never been reckless in your life. Everything you _do_ is reckless. You see the whole universe as your plaything, Doctor.”

                He’s patient with her biting words; probably knows that she doesn’t truly mean them. “That’s not true, and certainly not about you.”

                 “You could’ve fooled me,” she mumbles, gaze cast downward so that she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. The Doctor hesitates, seemingly waiting for some cue that Donna’s not giving him. He’s about to speak when suddenly, eyes wide, she looks up at him and asks nervously, “Does Shaun know where I am?”

                The Doctor’s face falls slightly and he nods. “Your grandfather helped me to explain things to him. Not… not the alien bits. But that you and I had traveled together, and that I could help you. He seems like a nice bloke.”

                “Yeah, he is.” After a moment’s pause… “We’re considering a separation,” she confesses. Her lip is quivering, but she’s still maintaining a relatively calm demeanor.

                “Oh. You’re… why?”

                She crosses her arms, suddenly looking immensely uncomfortable. “My headaches… my blackouts… it’s all been creating a lot of friction between us. We’ve given counseling a go but it hasn’t helped much.”

                This news leaves the Doctor feeling helpless. Donna isn’t saying so, but she wouldn’t have had those headaches and blackouts if it weren’t for him, and he feels like he should have some way to fix it, just like he fixed her. “Perhaps now…”

                “Perhaps.” She doesn’t sound particularly confident.

                He watches her carefully, waiting to see if she says anything else, but no. So he tells her, “You should probably rest.”

                “I’ve only just woken up,” Donna argues. But as soon as she says it, she feels inclined to agree with him; even their brief interaction has been rather draining.

                “Will you at least lie down?”

                “What makes you think I’m staying?”

                The Doctor’s brow furrows, and he promptly begins to stammer over an explanation. “I didn’t… I just meant… we’re in the time vortex right now. It’s the only reason you’re recuperating so quickly. You need to stay a bit longer. Then I can take you home.”

                “Oh.” She frowns and, after a moment’s thought, steps around the Doctor, inching toward her bed. “I will rest, I think.”

                “Good.” He sounds relieved. “I’ll leave you to it, I suppose.”

                When he’s in the doorway, Donna calls after him, and he spins around far too quickly. “Yes?”

                “I missed you,” she mumbles. “Even though I didn’t remember you. I still… I knew that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.”

                She doesn’t expect the Doctor to say anything in return, but then his lips quirk up into a smile and he says, “I missed you too.”


	2. Chapter 2

                The next time she wakes, the Doctor is sitting beside her again. This time, he is awake and reading a book, feet propped up on her bed as he leans back in his chair. At the sight of him, she rolls her eyes and clears her throat lightly. “I suppose it’s reassuring to see that you still delight in putting your feet on the furniture.”

                He smirks at his book and, without looking up, points down toward the floor. “But I took my shoes off first, so your bedspread will be fine.”

                Donna can’t help but smile. “It’s lovely that you’ve learned some manners since last we met.”

                Something about her tone makes him frown and look up at her curiously. Under his scrutiny, she squirms. “What? I was only teasing.”

                “I know, I just…” He hesitates, and finally just shakes his head. “Never mind, it’s not important. You’re probably hungry, aren’t you?”

                Although she objects to the subject change, Donna becomes startlingly aware of her rumbling stomach, and she nods eagerly. “Oh yes, I’m starving.” She pushes her covers away, making to get out of bed.

                “Oi, where do you think you’re going?”

                She frowns at him, now. “The kitchen, unless you’ve got some objection?”

                “No, no, it’s not that.” The Doctor sets his book on the bed and stoops down to the floor. “I had lunch all ready.” He rises to his full height, a tray now in his hands.

                This is not the first time that he’s brought Donna a meal in bed. She remembers well the day that they celebrated her birthday, when he surprised her with breakfast before leading her excitedly into a party that descended into chaos when a bounty hunter showed up, seeking out a fugitive monarch who’d taken up refuge amongst the crowd.

                She remembers, too, when she fell disgustingly ill—probably the worst cold she’s had in her life, despite the Doctor’s insistence that she couldn’t possibly be getting sick—and he brought her that magnificent soup from the moon of some planet in the Andromeda galaxy… soup that always stayed warm, no matter how long you let it sit.

                 And as he rests the tray in her lap, she realizes that he’s presenting her with that same soup and the sight of it puts an ache in her chest. She feels daft, getting emotional over a bowl of soup, but at the sight of it, she can’t help but remember how fretful and attentive he was just over a cold. No one had been so concerned about her well-being before or since.

                Donna looks up at the Doctor, and though she might be looking at a different face, she sees that same degree of concern now.

                “Is that… alright?” he asks carefully, as though afraid that she’s going to throw the tray right back at him.

                “Yes.” She looks down at her lap, at the steaming bowl and the mug of warm coffee beside it, and she smiles. “This is lovely, Doctor. Thank you.”

                He nods dutifully, and stands over her for an awkward moment before declaring, “Right, I guess I’ll leave you to it…”

                “Don’t be daft! Stay.” She feels a little startled by her own insistence on the matter, and quickly amends the statement by adding, “I mean, who else am I going to talk to? The TARDIS?”

                The TARDIS creaks loudly, offended, but both Donna and the Doctor pretend not to notice. Again, he nods. “Okay, I’ll stay.” He eases down onto the chair again, but sits on the edge, ready to jump back up in a flash if she changes her mind and wants him to leave.

                For some minutes, the room remains completely silent as Donna slurps up her soup. The Doctor is reluctant to make small talk, but she makes no attempts to carry on a conversation. He’s almost given up and opened his mouth to say something—what he intends to say, he’s still not sure—until, still looking intently at her soup, she says, “Doctor, I’ve got a question for you.”

                “Ask away,” he instructs, relieved that she’s not leaving the conversation up to him.

                “On my wedding day, somebody… I feel odd asking, because it probably wasn’t… but it just seems like such a coincidence…”

                The Doctor raises his eyebrows. “What is it?”

                “Someone gave me and Shaun a lottery ticket. A winning ticket. And Gramps never would tell me who it was from, so I never was able to thank them. But… it was you, wasn’t it? That’s why he wouldn’t tell me.”

                Bugger. That’s not what he was expecting. He stalls, flicking at a nonexistent speck of lint on his trousers. “Me, buy you a winning lottery ticket? That would be rather improper, don’t you think? Misusing the TARDIS and all. A Time Lord would know better.”

                “You’d think so, yeah.” She smirks at him. “But that rarely stops you. It was you, wasn’t it?”

                The Doctor’s cheeks turn pink and he rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Might’ve been, yeah.” He really hadn’t wanted Donna to know about that. Even disregarding the fact that she _couldn’t_ know, he didn’t want her to know.

                “Oh, Spaceman…” Donna’s smile becomes gentler, and her teasing tone is long gone. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

                It’s been lifetimes since he last heard that name, and her use of the old moniker makes his hearts ache. “No, I should have done more.” He should have done everything in his power to give her a good life after what he took away.

                They both fall silent to consider the matter as Donna finishes the remains of her food. She feels the need to insist that he need not feel bad, that he did what he had to do. But she’s not about to reassure him that he had no choice, when she still firmly believes that he did; and that he chose wrong.

                For his part, the Doctor does not expect reassurances, nor does he believe that he deserves them. After all this time convincing himself that he was perfectly within his rights to do what he did, she’s got him questioning.

                Donna sets the tray aside at last. When she looks to the Doctor, she sees that his eyes are no longer on her. Instead, he is staring rather intently at a spot about six inches to her left, arms crossed and jaw set. “Oi, don’t get all broody.”

                He looks up at her and shakes his head, although he still doesn’t look particularly engaged. “I… wasn’t.” Much.

                “Mhm.” She pauses to see if he’ll at least crack a smile, but he doesn’t. “I should thank you, though.”

                “What?” The Doctor’s brow furrows as he leans forward and Donna wants to laugh, because now he certainly looks invested.

                “Shaun and I were able to start up a comfortable life with that ticket. Obviously not perfect, but I could have been… I could have been much worse off than that. And also…” She falters and looks down at her lap, where the Doctor realizes she’s been wringing her hands nervously.

                “Also?” he presses.

                Donna shrugs and lowers her voice as she murmurs, “I suppose I should say thank you for helping me, too. I was… before, I was a bit too focused on the fact that you took my memories away, and the fact that you didn’t come back to fix it immediately.” She looks up abruptly and adds, “Mind you, I’m still cross about that. But… you’ve put me right now. So thank you.”

                “Of course, Donna. And perhaps you’re right. You didn’t want me to seal off your memories, so maybe I shouldn’t have. I just… I didn’t want you to die. I really, really did not want you to die.” The Doctor couldn’t let that happen; he needs her to understand. “The universe is a better place with you in it, whether you remember me or not.”

                She flushes, unsure of how to cope with his compliment. “Alright Time Boy, don’t think you can fix everything with flattery. But I’ll take that as an apology for now, yeah?”

                The Doctor nods. Gesturing to the tray, he asks, “Would you like me to take care of that for you?”

                “No, I can do it.”

                Before the Doctor can protest, Donna pushes her covers away and climbs out of bed. She’s hardly taken a step when she stumbles. He lunges out of his chair to catch her before she collapses completely.

                “As your resident Doctor, I feel that it’s my duty to prescribe more bed rest,” he informs her gently as he helps her back onto the bed.

                “Would you at least fetch me a book on your way back from the kitchen? I’ll clearly need some way to amuse myself.”

                “No need.” The Doctor gestures to her bedside table, to a book that lies open and overturned. “That’s the one you were halfway through when…” He can hardly say when she _left_. Leaving implies that she made the choice.

                Donna doesn’t leave him to flounder, although she is curious—furthermore, can’t even begin to guess—how long the Doctor has left her room in such pristine condition. “Perfect. Thank you.”

                He nods, before tentatively asking, “Would you like anything else, though?” Easier than asking, _Should I come back, then?_

“Coffee?” she requests hopefully. Remembering, with great fondness, the delicious brew that the TARDIS coffee maker churns out.

                “Coffee,” the Doctor agrees, breathing a sigh of relief.


End file.
